


Flying Coach

by vanillafluffy



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol, Flying, Gen, Tony Being Tony, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 08:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: Tony Stark does not fly commercial--much less coach! Except this time, he has to, and he's not happy about it. Typical Tony!





	Flying Coach

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Classics_Lover](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Classics_Lover).



This is humiliating, he thinks as he boards the jet. He’s Tony Stark. He doesn’t fly commercial--certainly not coach!--but here he is. Pepper has Stark One, off at some meeting in Johannesburg. Stark Two is getting an overhaul, Stark Three is still on loan to the Sheik, and Four and Five have been loaned out to some philanthropic organization that flies doctors to impoverished orphans, or something like that--Pepper’s idea. Not that Tony objects to philanthropy--what he minds is _inconvenience_.

Ordinarily, he’d put on a suit and fly direct, but he just had a double root canal, and per Pepper, JARVIS has the suits on lock-down for 48 hours because of the drugs still in his system. Next time? He’ll fly Dr. Burns to New York instead of going out to LA himself. Even if he has to build a dental office in the Tower, it will be worth avoiding this.

With his phone in airplane mode, he can’t even kvetch to JARVIS about what a pain-in-the-ass this is. Seriously. He _owns_ this airline (by way of a subsidiary of a holding company of a merger), and he couldn’t even get into First Class?! He suspects Pepper and his AI have been conspiring to teach him humility again, like that ever works.

This is pathetic. He has no leg room, he’s crammed in next to a kid who smells like he’s bathed in cheap aftershave instead of bathing, and when the dolt in the seat ahead of him reclines, it’s even worse.

It might be tolerable if he could at least get drunk, but that’s going to take some doing. They confiscated the bottle of Scotch from his carry-on. Sorry, only three ounce bottles or less, they said, absconding with a perfectly innocuous bottle of Glenfiddich. (They were TSA employees, not AirLiberty, so he can’t even threaten to fire them.) Like philanthropy, Tony has nothing against security precautions, either--again, it’s the _inconvenience_. 

“What do you mean, you can’t take plastic for a drink order? What kind of Mickey Mouse airline is this?!”

After rummaging through his wallet, past phone numbers, business cards, a hardcopy picture of Pepper and a condom, he finds an emergency hundred tucked under a flap. Thank God.

“I’m not sure I can change this, sir,” says the flight attendant, staring at the Benjamin Tony is holding out. “Our drinks are only five dollars each.” He holds up a little plastic bottle filled with warm amber liquid, and Tony swallows involuntarily, Pavlovian response at its finest.

“Give me ten. Hell, give me twenty, I don’t care, as long as it’s Scotch. Please.” The last comes out through clenched teeth.

In the end, he winds up with twelve miniature bottles of Scotch (various brands), a cup of ice, four bags of peanuts, and two twenty-dollar bills to tuck back under the flap in his wallet.

“You’re not going to drink all that?” His seatmate stares at him in astonishment.

“Watch me.”

Tony spends the next couple hours of the flight knocking back Scotch, snacking on peanuts, and making mental notes about how he needs to improve AirLiberty; it’s definitely not up to par as a scion of Stark Industries. It's seriously _inconvenient_

He’s busy planning to completely gut every single plane and at least double the leg room, when a woman coming down the aisle sees him and stops in her tracks.

“Oh my God! You’re Tony Stark!” she exclaims, loudly enough that he hears a ripple of excitement from the surrounding seats.

He imagines being swarmed by his fellow passengers, unbalancing the plane and sending them plummeting to a fiery death in a cornfield somewhere in middle America.

“Are you crazy?” he says with equal volume. “You think a guy like Tony Stark flies commercial? The man’s got a whole fleet of private planes, you think he’s going to be mixing it up in coach?” 

“You look just like him,” she says, less certainly.

“It’s the goatee. If I shave it, so I just have the moustache, I look like Al Pacino. If I shave it all off, I look like that coked-out actor from the 90’s.” He keeps his voice disparaging, and it works. 

She shakes her head, says, “My bad,” and continues down the aisle.

That was close. Tony drains another tiny bottle, pondering the universal question of travellers everywhere:

_Are we there yet?!_

…


End file.
